


you and i, all the fame (hot guy and wossis-name)

by mayerwien



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Artist Zayn, Charity Worker Liam, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Male Friendship, Multi, Niall sits on the kitchen counter a lot, OT5, OT5 Friendship, Sound Producer Niall, Teacher Louis, University Student Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5968840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>FACE FIVE TROPES TO ACHIEVE LEGENDARY ARTIST STATUS</p><p>Or, Niall claims his being in The Industry (whatever that means) makes him the perfect person to prepare Zayn for his first-ever gallery showing. (OT5riends flatmates AU; Ziall if you squint?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and i, all the fame (hot guy and wossis-name)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a spinoff of [one of my other stories](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5734486), but you don’t have to have read it to get this one. It’s also now part of what is currently my catch-all flatmates AU, where Zayn is a freelance artist and photographer, Niall is a sound producer for an indie record company, Harry is a bakery employee by day and a university student by night, Louis is a preschool teacher, Liam works in a child placement agency and also hosts the weekend sports clinics for the kids, and various X Factor series 7 contestants and judges are their friends, bosses, and neighbors. 
> 
> ‘FACE FIVE TROPES’ concept borrowed from [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5392028) by screamlet, which is one of the things I worship shamelessly, along with samoyed dogs and real mortadella with pistachios.

_\--_

 

_LEVEL ONE: BLOND GUYS ARE EVIL_

 

The email arrives in the middle of _EastEnders._

It’s a warm summer night, and Liam has left the windows open to let some fresh air in. They never fold up the sofa bed in front of the TV anymore, so there’s enough room for Niall to sit and fiddle with his guitar, for Harry to spread out and study, for Louis to just generally spread out, and for Liam to actually sit and watch the program.

Zayn, meanwhile, is at the kitchen counter perched on top of a stool, drawing outlines on a sheet of paper in black felt-tip for Louis’ “Colour the Things That Start With the ‘CH’ Sound” worksheet. His laptop is open next to him, but he’s so engrossed in writing the print on the chocolate bar wrapper that he almost misses the ping. When he notices, he doesn’t reach out to his laptop; just slowly puts down his pen and folds his hands in his lap.

“Lads.” Zayn’s voice is quiet. “It’s here.”

“What’s that?” Louis turns his head toward him, sounding nervous. “Y-Your water’s broke? Is—is it the baby? LADS, THE BABY’S COMING!” he yells, jumping to his feet and racing across the flat to Zayn, trying to scoop him up in his arms. “LIAM, GET THE CAR, WE’VE GOT TO GET HIM TO HOSPITAL!”

“Shut uuuuup,” Zayn whines, kicking in his attempt to get free of Louis. The stool he’s sitting on falls over with a loud clatter, and Louis drags Zayn onto the floor, still screaming, “This is it, babe! Our child! Our first child!”

“Hey, Tommo, let him up!” Harry has walked over too, and he taps the back of Louis’ head with his foot as he squints at Zayn’s laptop screen. “It’s the gallery!”

The Storm Room, a small independent art gallery about twenty minutes away from their flat, is one of the city’s newer attractions. They’ve hosted not just a series of shows by up-and-coming local artists, but everything from EP launches and zine fairs to upcycle furniture bazaars and children’s T-shirt printing workshops. Zayn’s been to a couple of shows there, and he’s loved the place from the instant he set foot inside. Though some of the exhibits are quite flash, there’s something completely _honest_ about it, about the way it doesn’t waste time with pretentious nonsense like credential-trumpeting, and just tries to give people an experience that changes the way they look at things.

On Wednesday night last week, Zayn had finally worked up the courage to send them an email, asking if they were currently accepting applicants. He’s done it before—contacted galleries, loads of them—but they always either turned him down, politely but coolly, or simply never replied. So he hadn’t actually had his hopes up this time, just thought it would be fun to try.

The Storm Room had replied the next morning, saying they’d like to meet him that afternoon and to bring samples of his work along. Zayn had taken the bus there bringing just his laptop, because he hadn’t been able to afford printing out an actual portfolio, but they hadn’t seemed to mind.

“We’ll let you know in a week or so,” Storm, the gallery owner (his name is _actually_ Storm, how cool is that) had told him, just before shaking his hand and throwing him a careless wink.

And now it’s here.

“Is it good news?” asks Niall as he leapfrogs over the arm of the sofa.

“What’s the subject line?” Liam calls out, reaching for the remote to turn the TV off. “You can usually tell by the subject line.”

“It says _‘Hello Mr Malik,’_ with an exclamation point,” reports Harry.

“Exclamation point! Open it! Readitreaditreadit!” Niall fairly jumps into Harry’s lap, and Harry shoves him away. Then Zayn, who has finally clawed his way out of Louis’ grasp and back up the counter, shoves them both away, his hands shaking a little as he reaches for the trackpad and double-taps.

“Read it out, mate,” says Liam, settling on the other kitchen stool and smiling.

Feeling his heartbeat speed up, Zayn takes a deep breath and quickly scans the first lines of the email. _“’Dear Mr. Malik,’”_ he croaks aloud, _“’We very much enjoyed meeting with you last week. It’s always a pleasure for us to get to know young local artists, especially ones who are willing to take risks with new ideas and forms.’_ Shit.” He looks up. “It sounds like the buildup before the letdown, don’t it?”

 _"_ Keep reading, you knob,” the others yell in unison.

“Okay. Okay.” Zayn turns back to the laptop and scrolls down. _“’That said, we would love to have you and your work featured in a solo show in our gallery, which will run for two weeks, and can open as early as a month from now, at your convenience.’”_ He falls silent as the meaning of the words sinks in. “Oh. Oh my god.”

“Ha-ha!” Niall slaps Zayn violently on the back, while Liam pounds Zayn’s right shoulder in excitement, making it difficult for him to continue reading.

 _“’We’re looking forward to our next meeting with you, so that we can further discuss the details and help you prepare for your big night. Yours in love and art, The Storm Room.’”_ Zayn pushes away from the counter, grabbing fistfuls of his own hair. “Bloody _hell,”_ he squeaks.

Throwing his arm around Zayn’s shoulders, Harry cries, “You hear that, Z? You did it!”

“I always believed in you, sweetheart,” Louis says, wiping away an imaginary tear. “I always knew we’d make a beautiful baby.”

Zayn just stands there dazedly and lets everyone throttle him. “I’ll—I’ll need to go to the printers’, and, and think about the music, and food, and oh god, I’ll have to think about _pricing—“_

“Before you do any of that, would y’call your mum, please,” Niall pipes up. “Or else I’ll do it for you, and she’ll be very upset that you didn’t tell her first thing, and then _she’ll_ call _you_ to yell at you, and I’ll be her new favourite.”

“Worry about all that rubbish tomorrow,” Liam says, turning on the kitchen radio as loud as it can go and whipping open a cabinet door, magically producing a bottle of Woodford Reserve, while Louis reaches into the refrigerator for pop and the emergency beers they keep in the back. “For now, we celebrate!”

“To our Zayner and his artistic debut,” Harry proclaims proudly.

 _“Artistique,”_ corrects Niall in an exaggerated French accent.

“Battle cry on three. One, two—“

“Let’s get pissed!” they shout, clinking the bottles together.

Sometime later in the night, when Liam is doing the washing up and Harry and Louis are fast asleep on the sofa bed, Niall grabs Zayn by the shoulders and shakes him a little. “Listen, Zayner,” he whispers. “This could be it. Like, fuckin’ _it.”_

“I know,” Zayn says breathlessly, fighting to keep the smile from tearing his face in half. “I mean, s’just a small thing, but it could be the start of somethin’ really good, yeah?”

“It could be the start of somethin’ _huge_ for ya, mate.” Niall’s eyes are shining. “You’ve gotta play your cards right, y’know?”

“Uh-huh.” Zayn’s face is warm, so he rests his head on the kitchen counter, pressing his cheek against the cool marble. He sticks one hand out and begins patting down Niall’s hair, for no real reason other than it’s there.

Rolling with it the way he always does, Niall simply lays his head on the counter next to Zayn’s, facing him. “Let me help you,” he says eagerly. “I know how these things work, I’ve helped do the prep for EP launches before. I can be like your manager, or, or your agent, or whatever. Help you promote, put your name out there a little more. All I know is, you shouldn’t be alone in this.”

“You’d do all that for me?” Zayn says, his eyes widening.

“’Course I would, mate.” Niall reaches up to untangle Zayn’s fingers from his hair and squeezes them. “Shake on it.”

The two of them proceed to do their secret handshake, which is long and nonsensical and involves, among other things, miming punching each other in the nose, a round of stone-paper-scissors, and knocking their foreheads together. “Shooken,” they both finish solemnly, nodding.

“Ah, boyo. You’ll _go_ places with me guidin’ ya,” Niall says with gravity, patting Zayn on the cheek.

Then Niall sits back up and cackles—actually _cackles—_ and starts rubbing his hands together. Zayn, however, doesn’t realize the potential significance of this until a few days later, and by then it’s already too late.

 

\--

 

_LEVEL TWO: AWESOME MCCOOLNAME_

“I’m tellin’ ya, you have to do this stuff to _really_ get noticed now,” Niall says, looking back over his shoulder as he scrubs a chunk of parmesan enthusiastically against the grater. Unknown to him, the cheese is falling all over the table, two inches away from the plate it’s supposed to be on.

“Niall!” Katie cries exasperatedly, swatting his hand and taking both the grater and the cheese from him. “If you can’t do it properly, just sit over there and watch the pizza. And I mean _watch_ it, I mean use your actual _eyes.”_ Niall slides onto the kitchen counter agreeably, making binoculars with his hands and staring exaggeratedly at the oven.

The girls from 2A one floor down have come over for this month’s Semi-Italian Night, so named because Niall insists on also having burgers with their pasta and pizza. (Harry, upon hearing this news, had thrown his hands up in the air and said, “Well, if we have to have burgers, they’re going to well be Italian burgers,” and proceeded to make some kind of ricotta-filled patties before dragging Louis off to buy ingredients for the aioli sauce.)

“I get what you’re saying, it’s just, I dunno.” Cher, whose normally-wild mass of hair is tied back as neatly as she can muster, is bent over the bowl of cream cheese and chives she’s mixing together for dip. “I think real artists get by on _merit_ rather than anything else.” She bares her teeth as she mashes the fork through the center of the cold block of cheese.

“I’m not saying Z’s not talented! But you have to agree, image matters. It’s the glitz and glamour, the _mystery,_ that’s the stuff that initially lures people in. Isn’t that right, Z?” Niall asks, shouting the last part across the flat.

“Huh?” Zayn lifts his head in confusion. He’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa bed, organizing his pieces and trying to figure out which ones should go into the actual show. Earlier in the day, he’d scrounged around the flat for spare change—Harry always leaves his tips from the bakery lying around and forgets about them, and Zayn figures that if he doesn’t use them for this worthy cause, Lou will just find them and spend them on chips—and had come up with two quid and a bit, enough for him to run down to the shop and get wallet-sized copies of all his paintings and photos printed.

“You’ve got quite a large body of work,” Storm had told Zayn at the meeting earlier, peering at him from beneath the brim of his fedora with interest. “Impressive for someone your age, I must admit. But I suggest you try to narrow it down to stuff that ties into a single unified theme. This is your first show. This is gonna be the moment when you—“ at this point, Storm had made a wild flourishing gesture—“ _present_ yourself to the world. So when you’re making your selections, I want you to think about which of your pieces say, more than anything, _this is who I am.”_

Who _is_ he, though? Or at least, who does he want to show he is right at this moment? Zayn isn’t entirely sure. He knows what he wants to get across with each individual painting or sculpture he makes, but he tends to work off raw feeling; he doesn’t think he has one big overall statement he wants to make just yet. All he knows now is, he has over fifty potential pieces, and only so much wall space to work with.

Exhaling, Zayn holds one of the little photos up, then realizes it isn’t one of his actual pieces; it must’ve been left in the memory card and gotten printed by accident. It’s one he secretly took of Liam, the morning of his first day of work at the child placement agency. He’d been up at five that morning, puttering around the flat making tea and checking his watch every two minutes to see whether the bus would be there yet. In the photo Liam is unsmiling, all anxious and stiff, his clothes a little too pressed—but his eyes are shining, almost wet. Zayn thumbs the corner of the photo fondly before tucking it between the pages of his sketchbook. “Sorry, Ni, what were you sayin’?”

Niall sighs gustily. “I was saying, Zayner, that for you to succeed, you can’t just _have the show._ You need to create _hype._ You need to show that you’re _somebody_.”

Zayn laughs a little, picking up the next photo—a copy of one of his larger paintings, an empty room with cornflower-blue walls he’d seen in a dream once. “Right. And how’m I supposed to do that?”

“Well, first, you need a cool name.”

Katie stops stirring the pasta and turns around to stare at Niall. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re telling _Zayn Javadd Malik_ his name isn’t _cool_ enough?”

Shushing her, Niall pulls his legs up onto the counter and continues, “Just listen to old Ni-Yo for a second here, all right? You really want to stand out from the pack?”

“I…s’pose?”

Niall claps once. “Good. Now, while we _have_ got some stiff competition in Mr. Harry ‘I Don’t Need A Stripper Name Because My Real Name Will Already Do’ Styles, I believe I have hit upon a hit.” He pauses for effect, spreading his hands out like he’s envisioning a lit-up billboard. “What d’you think…of just…‘Zayn’?”

Zayn blinks. “What, like…just ‘Zorro’?”

“No. Better. All caps—‘ZAYN.’”

“Fuck off,” Zayn laughs.

“Trust me, it’s a _great_ idea! Loads of famous people are single-namers, an’ they stay famous and you remember them _because_ they’re single-namers. Michelangelo. Leonardo. Banksy. Warhol.”

“Warhol is his _surname,_ you knob,” Zayn says, rolling his eyes. “And no one calls Leonardo just ‘Leonardo,’ you’re thinkin’ of the Ninja Turtle, you are.”

“Usher,” Niall continues, unfazed, as he ticks the names off on his fingers. “Adele. Beyoncé. Fuckin’ _Cher,_ right, Cher?”

“Leave me and my namesake out of this,” Cher says, holding her hands up.

Niall points at Zayn. “And remind me again, that gallery owner bloke you spoke to, what does he call himself?”

“…Storm,” Zayn mumbles.

“I rest my case.” Niall frowns, sniffing the air. “Is something bur—oh, crap.” He falls off the counter and dashes to the oven, yanking the door down and yelping at the sudden gust of heat. “It’s okay, it’s okay!” he yells as he uses a dish towel to lever the pizza out. “Just a little crispy on top.”

Katie peers over his shoulder, coughing. “Niall, it’s completely _black,”_ she complains. “I told you to keep an eye on it. Harry is going to be so upset.”

“Should’ve left the cooking to us experts,” Cher says, shaking her head.

“Right. How’s that bowl of Philadelphia cream cheese comin’ along, Miss Cooking Expert?” Zayn asks with a grin. Cher sticks her tongue out at Zayn, and laughing, he lifts his camera to take a photo.

Naturally, it is right as Katie and Niall are arguing over how to save the pizza so no one will notice it’s ruined (Katie is suggesting scraping off the top layer and re-melting cheese onto it, while Niall is all for chopping up the whole thing and mixing it with lettuce and mayonnaise in a bowl and presenting it as “pizza salad”) that Harry and Louis return.

“We come bearing fancy, unpronounceable, and probably-way-too-expensive groceries,” Louis announces, as he holds the door open for Harry with a bow. With them is Aiden, one of Harry’s school friends, a bag from the supermarket in each hand.

“As we were on the way back we saw Aiden through the window of a bookshop just moping about, so we dragged him back here to join us,” Harry explains cheerfully.

“So why is he carrying all the shopping bags?” Katie asks, squinting.

Louis stands on his toes and gives Aiden a noisy kiss on the cheek. “Because he is a lovely, lovely boy,” he replies, and Aiden ducks his head.

Then Harry lets out a distressed wail. “What happened to the _pizza?”_ He rushes over to the blackened mess lying in full view on the counter, hovering over it as though he might detect signs of life.

“It’s okay, I’ll eat it,” Niall answers reassuringly, as if that solves everything.

They wind up ordering a replacement from Pizza Hut instead (“The pizza of shame,” Louis calls it, shaking his head sadly), which arrives just in time before Liam gets back from work and the loud, familiar nightly blast of opera music from 4A starts filtering down through the ceiling. Everyone takes their paper plates over to sit on the sofa bed or the floor around it, and while the others shout at each other over the strains of Puccini, Zayn eats his burger with one hand and goes back to arranging his photos with the other.

 _Dreams maybe,_ he thinks as he sets aside another painting, of one of his nightmares this time, a tiny white room with no windows or doors and only a hole in the center of the floor. _I could do a couple of new things, make the whole show about dreams?_ He bites his lip, then glances down at where Niall is splayed out on the floor, his hands moving animatedly as he tells a funny story from work—something about a singer getting his S’s and C’s mixed up while singing a line about woolly socks.

Zayn has known Niall long enough to know that he gets overly excited about _everything_. Even though they shook on it, Zayn figures that this Niall-the-Publicist thing is all a big joke, that Niall can go ahead and have his fun, thinking he’s being important, and Zayn will just keep on making the real preparations for his show like a normal person, and they’ll both be happy.

That’s what he figures, until Niall takes out his phone and snaps a picture of Zayn when he’s not paying attention, and Zayn asks what it’s for, and Niall replies, around the slice of pizza he’s folding into his mouth, “For your Instagram.”

“I’ve got an Instagram,” Zayn responds slowly, “and I didn’t know about it?”

“Just now!” Niall gets off the floor and drops onto the sofa bed beside Zayn, sending a couple of his photos flying. Zayn groans, but looks over at Niall’s phone.

There he is—@zayn (just ‘ZAYN’, sure enough) on Instagram, his profile picture a photo he doesn’t remember Niall taking of him standing on the fire escape stair, silhouetted in moonlight with cigarette smoke curling around his head. There are only two posts so far—one photo of his general studio area, with several of his unfinished projects still lying about; and the one Niall’s just taken, which is captioned _‘sorting pieces for my upcoming show. stay tuned for the details x’._

“I,” Zayn says. “I don’t know what to…”

“No, I _know_ what you’re going to say. You don’t want the focus to be on you as a person. You want it to be about your art. But I’m going to tell you right now, as lovely as your art is, love, people aren’t _just_ interested in the work anymore. They want to see the process. The person behind the madness.” Niall takes Zayn’s face in his greasy hands and squashes his cheeks in. “I’ll also be making you a Facebook page, for longer posts, and then for the actual launch, a Facebook _event._ Public, so we can invite everyone on all our friends lists. We’ve got less than a month to build this up, so we can’t afford to waste any time.”

Zayn is starting to feel a slight sense of panic. “What…have I got to do?”

“Ah, _you_ won’t need to do anything. As your new manager-slash-publicist-slash-agent, I am in charge of ghostposting for you. You naturally have a say in any major statements we’re going to be making about your future projects, signings at major bookstore chains, sexuality, et cetera, but everything else is on me.”

Zayn wrinkles his nose, but picks up the phone again to get a second look, tapping through Niall’s (his?) new account. “Who d’you have me following?” Niall, God knows how, has found the names of several local artists, including a couple of well-known street artists, and followed all of them. But that’s not the only thing. “Am I following _random stranger girls?”_

“Tactics, mate. We’re casting the net wide. They log in, see a beautiful boy with an exotic name’s started following them, check him out, boom, the ZAYN wildfire spreads.” Niall punches his palm. “I’ll also be regramming some stuff you like, but only the esoteric hipster stuff. Maybe post a couple of stills from those French porn movies you love so much.”

“Oh my god, Ni, for the last time, it’s not porn, it’s _erotic film,_ and it’s high art, that is.”

“Whatever. Now. Will there be art critics at your show?”

Zayn shrugs. “Gallery said they’re just inviting someone from the local paper, like they usually do. Which is what I expected, y’know, I mean, it’s not like I’m at the Tate Modern or nothing.”

“Hmm. We’ll see about that,” Niall says critically. “Oh, which reminds me—I’ll be coming along wit’ ya to the meetings. Make sure they’re not exploiting our boy, eh?”

“Hang on, hang on.” Liam sets down his fork and knife and puts one hand to his temple. “Am I correct in understanding that because our Niallers here is a bigshot soundboard monkey—“

“Ah ah ah—sound producer,” Niall corrects, lifting a finger.

“He is now in charge of _running Zayn’s life?”_

Huffily, Niall replies, “As I have been saying, I am _also_ the semi-official social media manager for Drop the Showerhead Productions, which means that I have done this for our studio loads of times. We post on Twitter and Instagram every time someone comes in to record, photos of them in the booth, candid shots between takes, short video clips of us doing the mixes, stuff like that. It keeps people interested between actual releases, so they never forget about us. And that is exactly what I’ll be doing for Z.”

“Oh, well. As long as you’re not catering the show opening, too,” Liam sniggers. Niall proceeds to pelt Liam with crisps, all of which Liam instantly picks up and folds neatly into a paper napkin.

Zayn has to admit, the plan makes sense, and it _does_ work for the record company. For an indie producer, Drop the Showerhead is fairly popular; Niall is forever taking selfies with all the Top 40 acts who come by to record EPs with “a different sound.” Zayn’s not too sure about showing people his process, though—for one thing, there isn’t much to show, other than him sitting on the floor staring out the window for hours on end. For another, he’s always thought of his process as something private; he’s not like Niall, who asks them almost on a daily basis to listen to the raw mix of a new song and tell him what they think.

“Seriously, Z. You’re okay with this…arrangement,” Louis says flatly as he swirls the dregs at the bottom of his Coke can, the disbelief in his tone evident.

“Shut up, Lou. He trusts me,” Niall says proudly, and turning to Zayn, adds, “doesn’t he?” And oh god there it is, his face is so _lit up,_ the reason why no matter what reservations he has, Zayn can only think of one possible reply.

Clearing his throat, Zayn says, “Yeah! I mean, yeah. S’my first show, I’ll have my hands full with the actual art side of things, so…it makes sense I’ll need someone to help get my name out there a bit, make sure it sticks.” He clears his throat again, and Louis gives him a strange look.

“Aaand there we have it, from the man himself. So if you’d all kindly shut up about it and let us get on with our work, Z and I would be grateful.” Niall stands up, stepping over Aiden’s legs, and stretches. “Now, who’s up for some delicious crispy pizza salad?”

“Save us,” Harry groans. “No, wait, _I’ll_ save us, I’m throwing that shit out before you can do anything else to it,” and he scrambles to his feet to race Niall to the kitchen.

 _Us,_ registers in Zayn’s mind faintly. _Our work._

Everyone who is left glances at each other before looking at Zayn. “You don’t like it, do you,” Aiden says first, his voice low. He licks his lips a little, the way he does when he’s anxious.

“Hmm?” Zayn pretends not to have heard. “Like—what?”

Liam shakes his head. “Mate. You’ve got to tell him the truth.”

“He can’t _tell_ him, he doesn’t want to hurt his feelings!” Katie’s eyes are round beneath the heavy fringe of her lashes. “Do you, Zayn?”

Zayn hesitates. He’s about to have his first ever solo show, and there’s so much to consider. Maybe Niall’s right, he does need help figuring this stuff out. And to be honest, Katie’s right too—he _doesn’t_ want to hurt Niall’s feelings, not when he’s so dedicated.

Then Zayn thinks about Niall darting around him while he paints, documenting the process in photos and six-second video clips, and he shudders. But then he thinks about all the rejection emails he’s ever gotten, the silences and all they imply. He thinks about his classmates from art school who’ve already gotten commissions to do sculptures for five-star hotels, or grants so they can live in Paris for a year just taking in the sights and putting them on canvas.

“No,” Zayn says finally, “s’not like that. I’m not just—leading him on, or anything. He’s doing me a favor, really he is.”

Louis just scoffs, tossing his last piece of pizza crust into his mouth and popping the tab on his second Coke. “Tenner says you’ll be at each other’s throats in a week.”

 

\--

 

_LEVEL THREE: MAKEOVER MONTAGE_

        

Zayn is vaguely aware that it is morning. He is also vaguely aware that someone is sitting on the edge of the sofa bed and leaning over him. Zayn does not like knowing either of these things, and is thoroughly determined to ignore them and go right back to sleep.

The person currently breathing in his ear, however, has other plans.

“Get up, loser, we’re going shopping,” Niall says sweetly. When Zayn refuses to acknowledge him, Niall lifts his head and yells something, and suddenly there are four people sitting around Zayn instead of just one, and they’re all singing ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ and Zayn wants to stuff the sofa cushions down their throats but then he realizes he wouldn’t have anything to sleep on, so all he can do is half-open his eyes and glare darkly at them from beneath his pillow.

“Today, and by ‘today’ I _do_ mean ‘before the moon comes up,’ we’re going to work on your look,” Niall announces. “Now, Zayn. Zaynerino. The Z-Man. If you had to describe your look in one word, what would it be?”

“Shit, Ni, I don’t know.” Zayn yawns. He’s at home most of the time, so he doesn’t think about his clothes too much; usually it’s an old pair of sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and daubs of paint already all over the front. “Comfortable?”

Louis smacks his palm down on Zayn’s arse and makes a buzzer sound. “Wrong! That was the old, boring Zayn Malik. The new and improved ZAYN is a style _icon.”_

“Shopping!” Liam claps enthusiastically. “Ooh, let’s all go!”

“Noooo, don’t go shopping without me, I’ve got to studyyy,” Harry moans. “Exams are coming up, so I’m going to be in Costa’s with Aiden all day today.”

“It still beats me how you and Aiden study together when you’ve completely different majors,” Louis comments.

“It helps, actually. When he’s taking a break I tell him about what I’ve been reading on the Right to Silence, and when I’m taking a break he tells me about what he’s been reading on Chretien de Troyes. So it’s like we get to review aloud _and_ learn trivia. It’s a what-d’you-call-it. Symbiotic relationship.” Harry flops onto the sofa bed beside Zayn, his curls splaying across the pillow.

“Riiiight. Can’t spell ‘studying’ without ‘stud,’ is what I always say.”

“Shut up, I told you it’s not like that.” Harry’s cheeks redden as he sticks his socked foot into Louis’ stomach. “We’re just friends.”

“Well, we’re still going shopping without you and your just-friend.” Louis snatches the blanket off Zayn, ignoring Zayn’s agonized cry, and tosses it dramatically over his shoulder like a stole.

“Go on then. But I’m warning you, your flowery shirt and scarf games will be extremely weak without me.” Harry sniffs.

They really do go shopping, once they’ve succeeded in forcibly shoving Zayn’s legs into his trousers, and dropped Harry and his pile of textbooks off at the Costa’s along the way. When Zayn uncomfortably reminds them that he’s the only one without a regular income to spend on things like a new wardrobe, Niall just shakes his head and says, “My experiment, my treat.” He then leads them into a shop, where he and Liam immediately begin selecting clothes for Zayn, while Louis wanders off to look at shoes.

“Now, what looks like it says ‘artsy and mysterious’?” Niall muses, flipping through the hangers.

Liam holds a loose denim shirt in front of Zayn’s torso critically. “Something like—what’s that awful American magazine Haz reads, with all the man-buns and blanket forts?” He puts the shirt into Zayn’s arms, then proceeds to adds two more in different shades.

“Kinfolk! But Kinfolk with _bite,_ or like, Toast with leather. Aha!” Triumphantly, Niall tosses Zayn a pair of jeans with holey knees and chains running down the sides. “Also, if Z grew his hair out, _could_ he pull off a man-bun?”

“Hmm. Good question. Does the bunner choose the bunnage, or the bunnage the bunner?”

Zayn is still only half-awake, and barely understands what either of them is saying. He opens his mouth several times to protest what they’re picking out for him, but then Niall just throws another vegetable-dyed jumper over his face, and any energy for argument that he had withers and dies.

Having now amassed a gigantic pile of clothes, Niall wants Zayn to go into the dressing room with all of it and model each outfit one by one, but the dressing room attendant informs him they can only try on six things at a time. “The cinema lies,” Niall says, narrowing his eyes at the man from behind his sunglasses; but he relinquishes most of the pile, picking out what thankfully appears to be the most wearable of the lot.

In the end (and only after Niall takes photos and videos of _everything),_ Zayn emerges from the shop with several slim-fit shirts and pairs of knee-cut jeans, a white and a black dress shirt for more formal occasions, and a faux leather jacket with appliqued patches on that he actually really likes. (Louis also buys a scarf, just to prove to Harry that he can shop for scarves on his own, and wears it out on the street even though it’s hot out.)

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it,” Niall says, ruffling Zayn’s hair as they’re lining up for fish and chips, and Zayn begins to think this whole thing really might not be so bad after all.

Zayn’s second meeting at the gallery is on a Wednesday morning, so he decides to make his first trip to the printer’s that same afternoon. Niall’s slicked some gel through Zayn’s hair and convinced him to wear one of his new pairs of jeans and dress shirts, but to undo the top three shirt buttons for some insane reason. Zayn manages to bargain him down to two, over a sorry breakfast of tinned beans and toast (the best they can do today, since Harry got called down to the bakery early due to some kind of kouign amann emergency).

Over the past few days, Zayn’s been able to select the pieces that will go into his show with some semblance of coherence—he has three of the freestanding sculptures he made in senior year, twelve paintings, and a good number of the gorgeous landscape photographs he took on their trip to Wales. Niall, on the other hand, has visited the bar Zayn did wall murals for a couple of months ago, and uploaded a picture of each wall online. (Niall has also been informing him that there are already a couple of teenagers talking about how cute he is in the photo comments; Zayn prefers not to look, whereas Louis and Liam have been reading the comments aloud to him in high-pitched voices every chance they get.)

“James, I told you, I’m accompanying my mate to his meeting today. If you—“ Niall shifts his shoulder to push his phone higher up againt his ear, while simultaneously scooping up his last forkful of beans. “What’re you on about, you’ve got Gam there, she knows everything better than I do— Well, _take_ it out of my pay, then, you bastard. All right. Love you too. Cheers, babes. Byeeee.”

“Your boss is so weird,” Zayn says, as Niall hangs up and dumps his plate in the sink.

“I know.” Niall looks proud. Then he raises his voice, even more than usual, so it rings throughout the near-empty flat. “Now come on, we’re taking Lou’s car, so we can pull up in front of the gallery in something really flash.”

“You are _not_ borrowing my car, oh my _god,”_ Louis screams on cue from the bathtub.

Niall snatches Louis’ car keys off the hook by the door and runs down the corridor to stand in front of the bathroom, doing a little jig and waggling the keychain around tauntingly while Louis yells Definitely Not Appropriate For The Classroom Words. Then Niall comes back out and calmly replaces the keys on the hook, and he and Zayn go down to catch the bus.

As soon as they enter The Storm Room, they’re greeted by the sight of Storm himself lying spread-eagled in the middle of the lobby. He’s staring up at the skylight, humming to himself and conducting an invisible orchestra, while his assistant is behind a desk texting. “And you say my boss is weird,” Niall mutters out of the corner of his mouth. Zayn sticks an elbow in his ribs.

The assistant, who looks a little like a very tall leprechaun, glances up and catches sight of them making their way across the concrete floor. He clears his throat. “Storm, Zayn Malik is here to see you.”

Storm stops his conducting and swings up into a sitting position, smoothing back his hair. It’s bright aquamarine today; the last time Zayn saw him it had been scarlet. “Mr. Malik,” he says, offering them a lofty, slight smile as he gets to his feet, holding out his arms.

“ZAYN,” Niall corrects, shaking Storm’s hand, and Zayn almost dies because he swears he can hear the capital letters. “And I’m Niall Horan, his—“

“Friend,” Zayn cuts in automatically, almost without thinking.

“Publicist.” Niall frowns slightly.

“Your publicist!” Storm wakes up a little and turns to the assistant, clicking his heavily ringed fingers. “Olly, be a dear and get the man’s digits so we can coordinate.” Olly nods dutifully and lopes over, tablet in hand. “We have coffee waiting for you in the meeting room.” Storm places one hand on Zayn’s shoulder and the other on Niall’s, and steers them up the banisterless staircase to the glass-walled box that overlooks the gallery proper.

“So Zayn, you’ve narrowed down your collection?” Storm says, once they’re seated around the glass table, steaming cups of some rare, bitter Vietnamese blend (which Zayn _thinks_ Storm mentioned was made from ferret shit, but he doesn’t want to confirm it by asking) in their hands. Niall, embarrassingly, appears to have felt the need to test the quality of his leather swivel chair by spinning around in it. Zayn would kick him, but the table is wide and his legs aren’t long enough. Olly, who is sitting beside him, is still texting, tactfully pretending not to notice.

“Yeah. I, erm, tried to go with a more specific theme, but then I ended up just pickin’ out m’best work. I think.” Zayn takes his business card case out of his knapsack pocket, laying the photos out on the table in a grid. Storm extracts a pair of spectacles from his breast pocket and leans forward, his nose nearly touching the surface of the table as he hems and haws at Zayn’s choices.

“Sculptures, good,” pronounces Storm finally. “I was drawn to this one in particular, first time you showed me the photo.” Storm taps the photo in question, one of Zayn’s smaller sculptures—a sort of mobile he made out of the junk someone had dumped behind their building one afternoon. He’d been missing home for some reason that day, missing his mum and his sisters and his small bedroom with the low ceiling and peeling paint—and almost without thinking about it, he’d sat down on the ground, right there in the back lot, tying strips of fabric and pieces of broken glass to the umbrella stand until he had something that looked like how he felt, prickly and soft and open all at the same time.

“I like that one too, yeah,” Zayn murmurs.

Storm nods, pushing his glasses up his nose with two fingers. “Paintings, good, good. I’m glad you chose these, because these are the ones I feel are just dying to claw their way off the canvas. Now the photographs—”

“Actually, can I say something?” Both Zayn and Storm turn to look at Niall, who it appears has actually been listening intently to the conversation with both elbows on the table. He’s even popped his glasses on. “This is just my honest opinion, mind. As an outsider.” Niall steeples his fingers. “But if I were just your ordinary viewer, I’d walk into your show and think there were two different artists exhibiting. I get the sculptures and the paintings go together, Z. They’re fantastic. But the Wales photos, they’re not—daring enough, they’re not _you_ enough.”

“What are you _doing,”_ Zayn mouths. This definitely was _not_ part of the deal. Niall is there to talk about where to set up the registration table and what clothes he’s going to be wearing; he’s not supposed to have an opinion on the actual _show._

But Storm is tapping his chin thoughtfully. “No, no, Niall’s right. The photos are…lovely, but a little dead compared to the rest of the stuff you’ve got here. And I know you’re not here to do lovely. You’re here to _explode.”_

Zayn suddenly feels like he’s back at uni, sitting across his prof’s desk and getting his midterm submission critiqued—he knows they’re right, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. “I just…wanted to show ‘m versatile,” he says mulishly.

“And you will,” promises Storm. “Just not with these photos.”

“I haven’t really got—I mean, my other photos are nothing. I’ve got some stuff I did for class but it was ages ago and it’s all rubbish now, and everything else is just street stuff. I don’t think any of my other ones put together would be as—cohesive, like.”

Storm clears his throat importantly. “Well, to tell you the truth, Zayn, the other work you’ve got here is so strong, it could make up your entire show. But if you’ve got your heart set on exhibiting photos, too, and I know you probably also want to maximize the gallery space—maybe think of something else you can do. If you don’t want to go back to those old photos, why not take some new ones, in line with your show title, maybe.” Storm peers at him. _“Have_ you thought of a title yet?”

Zayn looks down at his own feet through the glass table. “Not yet.”

“Well, there’s time enough for that. But the sooner you let us know, the sooner we can make up the promos, hmm?” Zayn just nods. “Now. Let’s go down and see the space again, shall we?” Storm says, his faint Scottish brogue emerging slightly. “There’s another exhibit on at the moment, of course, but you can walk around, take measurements if you want, figure out where things will go.”

And, as if to prove that this meeting _could_ go even worse than it already has, Niall chooses the moment as they get to their feet to say brightly, “Thanks for the ferret shit. It was delicious.”

Rather than look offended, Storm bursts out laughing. “I like you, Niall!” He extends his elbow like a prince at a ball, and Niall takes it, and they descend the stairs together, Storm asking “So I’m curious, what does a sound producer do, exactly?” as they go.

Zayn hangs back a little before following; he wants to enter the gallery on his own, away from the others. Olly grasps his shoulder and gives him a quick, knowing wink before moving past, returning to his phone as he takes the steps two at a time.

Seeing the space anew, knowing that soon it will be his, Zayn can imagine it so well. It’s so _close._ He paces around the gallery, picturing a table here, a standing sculpture there, stopping to stare at a wall or size up a corner. (He’s aware Niall is taking pictures of him doing it, too, so he purposely looks the other way every time.)

Then Zayn stops, in front of the wall which he just knows _has_ to be the photo wall. He hadn’t been thinking of selling prints of his photos, so he hadn’t planned on matting them or putting them in frames; originally his idea was to string some twine across the length of the wall and laundry clip the prints to the twine.

It will be such a _waste_ if he doesn’t do it. But he doesn’t have a hope of making a new photo series in the time he has left. He’ll have to properly rack his brains for this one. Zayn glances sideways, sees Niall taking a selfie with Storm, and sighs.

After thanking Storm for his time and promising to email Olly an update soon, Zayn goes to the printers’ to make some test copies of his zine; and though he tells Niall he doesn’t have to come along, he does anyway, taking videos of all the machines and every time the weary-looking guy on duty hands Zayn another colour test sheet.

“So explain this to us, Z,” Niall coaches, as he zooms in on Zayn’s hands carefully folding the zine pages in half. “What’ve we got here?”

“Not now, all right?” Zayn turns his shoulder towards the camera and pulls the sheets into his lap.

“Och, the wee lad’s a mite touchy today,” Niall says in a thick Scottish accent, clicking his tongue. “Wurra wurra.”

“Am not,” Zayn mumbles.

Then Niall points at the cover and asks, “Doesn’t that blue there look a bit muddy to you?” and Zayn has to bite the inside of his cheek before he says something he’ll definitely regret.

 

\--

 

_LEVEL FOUR: CORNER OF WOE_

 

It’s a muggy afternoon when Zayn announces he’s going out to buy art supplies.

“When you do, could you bring down Mary’s post, please?” asks Liam from his spot in front of the TV, Playstation controller in his lap as he methodically beats up a giant panda onscreen. “It got put in our box by accident and I brought it up without looking.”

“Sure.” Zayn swipes the envelopes off the kitchen counter and practically flies out the door, down the stairs to 1A. As he raps his knuckles firmly against the wood, he can hear a chorus of small voices chanting in Spanish coming from inside.

“Watching Dora the Explorer?” Zayn says when Mary opens up. “What’s happening this week? I hear that Swiper’s been a right bastard to poor Dora. She should just leave him, if you ask me.”

Mary crosses her arms as he hands her the envelopes, the corners of her eyes crinkling. The older woman is like a mother to everyone in the building; ever since they moved in, the five of them have knocked on her door for everything from laundry help to relationship advice, and she can always be counted on for a good cuppa.

“Very funny,” Mary says dryly, tucking a stray wisp of hair back into her bun. “Carly’s gone out to do some shopping, so I’m watching the girls for her.” Then she beams. “Oh, Zayn, Katie told me about your show.” Reaching out, she pats him gently on the cheek. “I’m so _proud_ of you.”

“Would…will you come?” Zayn nudges the corner of her doormat with his trainer.

“Of _course_ I will, you little idiot!” Mary pulls Zayn into a big hug right there on the mat, and he relaxes into her for a second.

Then, grinning, he asks, “Are you and Wagner going together, then?”

Mary pulls away and smacks Zayn playfully on the arm. “Oh, _you._ You’re just as bad as Harry. But to answer your question, no.” She sniffs. “Besides, he wouldn’t dare ask me.”

“He would,” Zayn says confidently, thumbing towards the stairs in the direction of Wagner’s flat; it’s no secret that the eccentric opera teacher has an especial soft spot for Mary. “And once I tell him about the show, he will.”

Then Zayn hears a small voice screeching _“Zaynie, Zaynie,”_ from inside Mary’s flat, and he automatically gets down on his knees and opens his arms, preparing for impact. First five-year-old Sophia Grace, then three-year-old Rosie, barrels into him at full speed, and he rocks back on his heels with an “oof!”

“Auntie Mary said you’re doing a show,” Sophia Grace says all in one breath, adjusting her plastic tiara on her head. “Are you going to sing _and_ dance, or just sing, or just dance? I can dance, did you know, Zayn? I can do tap. I can do tap _really_ good, only sometimes I fall over and then my bum really hurts and I say ouch but I don’t cry not ever never. Are you going to do tap at your show, Zayn?”

“It’s not that kind of a show,” Zayn chuckles. “It’s an art show, Soph. I’ll be hangin’ up some of me paintings, and people are going to come and have a look at them, and maybe buy some of ‘em.”

Sophia Grace claps enthusiastically. “Ooooo! That sounds _lovely.”_

“Can we come?” Rosie asks, nibbling on her thumbnail, her wispy blond hair falling over her eyes.

“Erm, sorry, loves, not to this one.”

“But why nooot?” Sophia Grace pouts.

“Well, first, it’s going to be very late at night, and second…” Zayn glances hesitantly up at Mary, who winks at him, before leaning closer to the two girls. “I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to promise not to tell Auntie Mary, all right?” he says in a low voice. The girls nod, and he draws them closer before whispering confidentially, “I done paintings of people without any clothes on.”

Sophia Grace guffaws in delight. “With their willies out and everyfin’?”

“With their willies out and everyfin’,” Zayn echoes cheerfully, leaning back on his haunches and petting them both on the head. “So maybe next time, okay?”

“Okay,” Sophia Grace concedes.

Mary claps her hands. “Right, girls, it’s tea time, and we’re going to make our own sandwiches, right? Zayn’s got to get on, so say bye now.”

Rosie opens and closes her hand shyly, while Sophia Grace waves her arms over her head and shouts, “Bye, Zayn! Good luck with your art show! And tell Louis not to wear his orange shirt to school anymore because it makes him look like a Wotsit!”

Zayn laughs. “I’ll tell him,” he calls over his shoulder as he gets to his feet.

“Now, girls, you know you must always remember to call him _Teacher_ Louis,” Mary chastises gently as she ushers the girls back inside. “And don’t call him a Wotsit, it’s not nice.”

“But we’re not in _school_ now,” Zayn can hear Sophia Grace pointing out, even as the door swings shut behind them.

The truth is, he thinks as he walks slowly down the pavement, breathing in the damp air, he just wants to get out of the flat for a bit, and away from Niall; ever since the meeting with Storm, Zayn’s been feeling a little resentful. He knows it’s not Niall’s _fault,_ exactly, that he has to change half of his exhibit, that Niall was smart to call him out on it—but the interference feels like some kind of betrayal that Zayn can’t quite pinpoint.

If only that were all, of course, but it isn’t. As Niall has practically become an expert on the art world overnight, in the past week he has _also_ set up Zayn’s Facebook page and had business cards made (both of which still just read ‘ZAYN,’ unfortunately); given comments on Zayn’s venue layout and placement of his pieces; chosen the music that the gallery will be playing on opening night (“No classical stuff, we don’t want people to fall asleep, it’s got to be real party music”), ordered finger foods from Harry’s bakery and drinks from a mobile bar; talked to various coffee shops and bars in the area to ask their permission to put posters up, and made several extremely embarrassing calls to art critics asking them to come to the show (the latter of which were all received coolly, which probably means they’re not interested, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing).

There’s just _so much Niall_ in his life now, demanding his constant attention—and they’ve all lived together for _years,_ so this is really saying something. And every time something comes up that Zayn doesn’t completely agree with, and he tells himself, _this is it, this is the part where you open your mouth and tell Ni you don’t like it and you’d rather do something different,_ Niall plays a sample or shows a mockup and somehow manages to convince him that his plan is what will sell. Zayn doesn’t know if he’s still going along because he actually believes Niall, or because somewhere along the way he lost the will to fight him.

Underneath all of that, though, there’s one thing that’s been bothering Zayn since day one, but that he doesn’t want to really acknowledge for fear it’ll be true—what if people think his art is rubbish? What if he gets a bad review, or no review at all? What if no one buys anything? What if this is all for nothing? He keeps imagining people sauntering through the gallery doors with their noses turned up and letting out scandalized gasps at his paintings, demanding to know why this establishment would ever agree to exhibit such pedestrian garbage, and Storm scurrying over to apologize while Zayn ducks out the back door to hide in shame—and though Zayn constantly tries to reassure himself that The Storm Room attracts the perfect audience for his work, and that Storm wouldn’t have said yes if he hadn’t thought he was good and meant it, the worry’s only getting stronger the closer he gets to opening night.

Now, however, as Zayn pushes open the glass door of his favourite art supply shop and breathes in the smell of india-rubbers and alcohol markers, he feels himself relax a little. He’s been going here since he was in school, but this is the first time he’s been back in a long while, and it’s all so familiar and comforting that he actually smiles in gratitude at the surly-faced teenager behind the counter.

Quietly, Zayn moves past the racks of knitting wool and fake flowers, and goes right to the paper aisle, where he rifles through packets of construction paper and vellum bristol. He’s going to make some hand-drawn stickers to give away to the guests—just slogans and little doodles in felt-tip, so it won’t be too time-consuming.

No, the real trouble is still the photo wall. Zayn’s thought of doing a series on abandoned places, so over the past couple of days he’s gone out to take photos of empty carparks and foreclosed buildings. It feels flimsy and half-baked at the moment, but he’s determined not to give up. Something will come; it has to.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he slides his packets of sticker paper into the crook of one arm so he can use his other hand to pull his phone out. It’s a text from Niall, which just reads, _“don’t forget you’ve got a photoshoot this afternoon!!!”_ Zayn groans and slams his head into the edge of the shelf, and a couple of bottles of glue fall to the floor.

“Oi,” the shop assistant calls from behind the counter. “Watch it over there.”

 _Just two more weeks,_ Zayn tells himself, pressing his forehead into the cold metal shelf and closing his eyes. Two more weeks, and then he’ll have what is either the best or the worst night of his life.

 

“I’m not very good at this,” Harry says as he attempts to straddle the bathtub, fails, and settles for stepping in and standing as close to the end as possible. He holds his phone above his head with both hands, elbows sticking out, in an attempt to get as much of Zayn in the frame as he can.

“You look ridiculous, mate.” Zayn laughs from where he’s lying in the bathtub, lifting his own camera to snap a photo of Harry contorting himself wildly. “Get _out,_ stupid, not get in, you’ve got to stand on a stool or something.”

“Ah! Of course, silly me.” Hopping out of the tub, Harry runs out of the bathroom and comes back with one of the stools from the kitchen. “Oh, hang on, just got a text from Niall. He says, _‘fill the tub,’_ exclamation point exclamation point.”

Zayn makes a face. Originally he hadn’t wanted _his_ photo on the posters at all, just a picture of one of his paintings, but Niall has coaxed him into agreeing to this, saying people will like getting a clear idea of who is making the art they’re about to go see. (As usual, the words ‘young,’ ‘dramatic,’ and ‘mysterious’ were used a lot.) “Jesus. Fine, but _I’m still not taking my shirt off,”_ Zayn yells at Harry’s phone, unlooping his camera strap from his neck and laying the camera carefully on the sill.

“Sorry, sweetheart, he can’t hear you,” says Harry fondly, and turns the tap on full force, laughing when Zayn yelps.

Once Harry has taken enough photos of Zayn dramatically splaying out in the bathwater and not looking into the lens, he announces, “There. Ni can’t complain; these are hipster as shit and your posters are going to look great, even with the shirt on.“ Harry smiles at the phone screen with pride, then looks at Zayn. “Hey, you still haven’t told us the exact date you’ve picked for opening night. Barbara needs to know so she can buy ingredients and everything.”

Zayn rubs his wrinkled fingertips together. “Haven’t I? It’s the fourth, Thursday.”

Harry immediately looks hurt.

“What?” Zayn asks.

“One night,” Harry says, clambering off the stool. _“One night_ a week I have class, and I’ve been saying for a month now that I’ve got exams coming up, and of all the nights you could’ve had, that’s the night you pick…”

“Shit. I completely forgot.” Zayn is stunned into a momentary embarrassed silence. “I didn’t mean to, I just, I figured a Friday or Saturday night’s no good, since people have got bigger parties to go to, like, and…”

“I’m just kidding, it’s fine, don’t move it for me. I’ll break the university record for fastest exam-taker ever, and I’ll _sprint_ to the gallery. Or steal Lou’s car, that’s probably a better idea.”

“No, no, it’s okay, I’ll move it. I’ll move it to Friday, I’ll give Olly a call now, they haven’t sent the emails out yet anyway. I can’t believe I missed that. Shit.” Zayn lets his head fall back with a groan and allows himself to slide under the surface of the water.

Harry leans over the tub, his expression clearly reading concerned even through the ripples. “Hey. Is everything okay?” he asks, once Zayn emerges.

Standing up slowly, Zayn squeezes the hem of his shirt, watching the water trickle out in a steady stream. “No, yeah, it’s just…all this stuff. Thinkin’ about the setup, and the pricing, and packing materials. And the gallery just emailed and said they’re putting up a couple of those fake walls, like, so’s I can stencil the wall labels on ‘em or paint directly on ‘em if I want, which would be great but I don’t know if I’ve got the time and I just…” He sighs. “I thought I had so much time, but…s’all happening faster than I thought it would.”

Harry unplugs the drain and hands Zayn his towel. “I hate to say it, but…if you need help, shouldn’t you be asking Ni? I mean, I’m completely down to staple your booklets again, if you want—“

“Zines,” Zayn corrects absently.

“—but if it’s about managing all the stuff you have to manage, I mean, he did make it his _job.”_

“I’m fine,” Zayn says automatically, and then corrects himself and says, “I mean, it’s fine,” and of course Harry doesn’t look convinced at all.

 

Four days before the show, Zayn scraps his plans for the photo wall and makes a new arrangement that spreads his pieces further out across the gallery space. It’s almost physically painful to mark out where a painting will hang instead of the lengths of twine—but he’s become forced to accept that after weeks of half-hearted shooting, the abandoned places photo series is a dud, and there’s no hope of him making another on such short notice. He knows that his other work is enough to make up the show, and people won’t know he failed to put a photo series together for it—but _he’ll_ know, and the disappointment in himself is putting a damper on any possible excitement he could be feeling right now.

On top of that, Zayn gets a call from the supply shop saying that the packing materials he’s ordered have been delayed, and might arrive as late as Friday _morning;_ and another call from Olly gently reminding him about the description of each of his pieces for the wall labels, which he’s been dreading and kept putting off. So Zayn spends the whole day alternately calling other art supply shops in the area just in case his first order doesn’t come through, and sitting in front of his laptop struggling to put words together in a way that won’t make him sound like he’s just pulling art school terms out his arse.

It’s just a bad day, and Zayn is already mentally exhausted, but he still has to work on his pricing so he can submit it to Storm for approval. When Niall gets home from work that afternoon, Zayn’s sitting at the kitchen counter with the cold remains of his lunch, chewing on a pen and staring dully at the printout of his price list.

“How’s my favourite artist?” Niall takes a running leap onto the counter and slides across it, stopping just short of Zayn’s work area and plucking an abandoned piece of gyro off his plate.

“S’all bread, that,” Zayn says without looking.

“Exactly.” Niall cranes his head around to see what Zayn’s writing, and then lets out a horrified gasp. _“No!”_ Grabbing the pen out of Zayn’s hand, he scribbles out the number Zayn’s just written down. “Are you mad?”

“Are _you_ mad?” Zayn grabs the pen back irritably. “What’re you _doing?”_

“Saving you from pricing yourself into poverty, that’s what! What d’you think you’re gonna achieve with numbers like that?” Niall stares incredulously at him.

“It’s not about the money for me,” Zayn says, a little heatedly. “I _want_ to be affordable, I’m actively fighting against the, the monopoly of culture by entitled artists, who are making their work completely unaffordable to the majority of p—“

“But pricing it that low, it’s like you don’t value your own work! And if you don’t value your work, then no one _else_ will.”

“That’s not true.”

“I bet Storm and Olly will agree with me,” Niall says confidently, folding his arms. He’s rapping his heel rhythmically against the side of the counter, like a metronome, or a ticking clock—and for a second it’s like the sound is drilling into Zayn’s skull, and he wants to just grab Niall’s ankle to get him to stop.

“Yeah, because you’ve got them eatin’ out the palm of your hand, right,” Zayn mutters.

“Hey.” Niall frowns at him. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“Nothin’. Forget it. Say what you like, all right, but it’s still not going to change my mind.” Zayn can hear his own voice rising, but he doesn’t care.

“Fine. But I’m telling you, you’re sellin’ yourself short,” Niall says.

“And you’re wearin’ me _out!”_ Zayn yells back. “Everything you’re doing, the way you’re taking over this, and you—keep acting like you know what’s best for me, and I’ve had _enough,_ okay?”

He’s aware, suddenly, of how loud his voice rings out in the flat, and for a second he wants to take it back. He’s not even _that_ angry at Niall, really—more tired and frustrated at himself than anything else. But then he sees Niall’s expression completely shut down, the way it does when he’s too hurt by something for words—his normally-grinning mouth drawn into a thin line, his eyes bright with confusion.

Zayn’s seen that look on Niall’s face before, but he’s never been the cause of it. And he realizes he doesn’t know what to do next. So what he does do is scrape back his stool, grab his carrier of spray paint cans and a large scrap piece of pasteboard off his studio worktable, and leave the flat.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Zayn pushes through the door to the back of the building. After he throws his hood up and flings the pasteboard down against the wall, he uncaps a can, shakes it violently and aims it at the board, slashing a bright pink wound across the surface.

In a way, this feels _great._ He hasn’t done this in a long time, just let loose and mucked about with spray paint. He does a couple more jagged lines in pink, then switches to a neon green. He lights a cigarette. He works like that for a while, trying not to think about how much time has passed since he left the flat, or what Niall’s probably doing up there now.

The pasteboard gets covered in overlapping shapes, and the air is sickly-sweet with the smell of paint—but Zayn doesn’t notice until a soft, musical voice from behind him breaks the silence. “I thought you were trying to quit smoking,” the voice says.

Zayn startles, then turns around slowly to see Rebecca standing on the pavement outside the fence. “Beck.” Mopping the sweat off his face with his sleeve, he sets his can down and walks towards the fence, pulling his hood down. “Hi. Erm, sorry. I didn’t know you were…sorry.”

Rebecca just tilts her head at him and smiles. She looks radiant, the way she always did when they were together. Better, even, and Zayn’s happy to see it. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t standing here long. Just on my way to the supermarket. Is that for your show?” she asks, indicating the pasteboard.

“How’d you know about that?”

“Niall texted me an invitation,” she says simply.

“’Course he did.” Zayn stabs the railing with his cigarette.

“I think it’s wonderful, Zayn. I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks. Feel like everything’s shit, though.” Throwing the cigarette on the ground, Zayn grinds it into the gravel with his shoe.

Rebecca shakes her head a little. “What’s happened?”

“I, um. Didn’t get to finish a thing I wanted to. And then I kind of…” Zayn takes a deep breath. “Had a fight with Niall today, and he’s been helping me plan the show, but we kind of had the fight _about_ planning the show, so m’probably screwed there. But the gallery’s counting on me to do a good one, and my mum’s making a thing out of it and driving down for the opening, so…gotta pull it together, I guess.”

“Lot of pressure, is it?”

“Fuck yeah.” Zayn gives a small, nervous laugh.

“Well, I can’t give you art advice, you know that, but…what was the fight with Niall about?” Rebecca leans on the railing to face him better, apparently not caring about getting grime on the elbows of her coat.

“He, erm. I said he’s been helping me, but I think he got excited, and he ended up, like, making all these decisions about what he thinks I should be doing.” Zayn sighs. “Guess it’s my fault too, I should’ve spoken up sooner, not…blown up at him like I did.”

Rebecca looks at him with sympathy. “I know it’s hard, and Niall’s your friend, but…these things, you’ve got to go with what you feel is right and just be yourself,” she says. “Niall can’t tell you who you are.”

“Ha. Don’t I know it.”

“Just _talk_ to him, all right? Be honest. It’ll work out. And, well, no matter what’s happening with your show, Zayn, I’m sure it’s going to be amazing.” Rebecca lays her hand on his arm, patting his wrist briefly before letting go. “I’ll see you on Friday,” is all she says, before walking away.

The sun is setting by the time Zayn gets back in. Niall is sitting on the floor by the window, with his back to him and his earbuds in. He always does that when he wants to think; they all know not to bother Niall when he’s at the window. He shows no sign that he’s noticed Zayn; just sits there motionless with the orange light surrounding him, framing him against the view of the city below.

Zayn’s head is telling him not to, that it would be wrong to take advantage of this—but he can’t help it, the lighting is so perfect. Carefully, he reaches for his camera where he left it on the sofa bed, focuses on Niall, and takes a photo, pressing down the button gently and hearing the shutter click slow as it lets in all that sun. He doesn’t need to look at the screen to know it’s a good shot.

Then he sees Niall straighten his back, and then Niall turns around to look at him. His face is in shadow, so Zayn can’t see his expression. “Hey,” Niall says, pulling his earbuds out and getting up.

“Look, you don’t have to—“ Zayn begins awkwardly, but Niall cuts him off.

“No, mate, I’m sorry, I’m sorry and you’re right. It’s your art, and I completely wasn’t listening to you. You should price everything how you want, you should do what you want. God, this is your big _night_ we’re talking about!” Niall is trying to sound upbeat, but Zayn can tell he’s still a little deflated. “So just tell me what you decide, and I’ll forward the info to the gallery, okay?” he says, clapping Zayn on the shoulder before going down the corridor, leaving Zayn standing in the living room somehow feeling even worse than he did earlier.

Zayn thinks for a minute about what he should do next. Then he looks down at his camera screen to review the photo, and he sees he was right—it _is_ a good shot. The kind he’d put on display, if he could.

Then he thinks about what Rebecca said, and several things click into place all at once, and it’s so obvious he slumps against the wall and laughs a little in relief.

He doesn’t know if he has enough time left, but what does he have to lose?

 

\--

 

_LEVEL FIVE: DANCE PARTY ENDING_

It’s Friday night, and the music coming out of The Storm Room can be heard all the way to the end of the street. People are coming through the doors in a steady trickle, alone or in twos or threes, and the gallery staff are greeting them in the lobby, leading them to the registration table and showing them into the brightly-lit space.

Zayn, in his new jacket and jeans, is hanging off a little to the side for now, holding onto the stem of his champagne glass and just taking everything in. The visitors are moving around his sculptures to observe them from every angle, or gathering in front of one of his paintings to study it in silence. He sees them nodding, and even _smiling,_ and the tense coil in his stomach finally, finally begins to unwind.

Ever since the night started, Storm’s been introducing people to him, too—“This is Zayn Malik, the artist,” he says each time, and Zayn shakes hands with whoever it is, a writer or a secondary school teacher or a fellow artist, stammering out a thank you when they tell him how much they’re enjoying the show. That’s his name now—Zayn Malik, The Artist. It doesn’t feel real.

The thing Zayn’s happiest about, though, is the title _WE ARE WHO WE ARE WHEN NO ONE’S WATCHING_ spray-painted in black on the wall adjacent to the entrance. Below it hang twenty large photo prints, laundry-clipped to lengths of twine. It was a bit of a rush job, getting all the photos printed at the last minute; he’d stayed up late tweaking the levels, and made it to the printer’s just before closing the previous night, but he’d done it.

And there they are—Liam’s first-day-of-work photo, juxtaposed with a shot he took a couple of months ago of Liam, one fist in the air as he coaches his weekend football clinic. From last summer—Rosie crying in a kitchen chair while Mary kneels in front of her, putting iodine on her scraped shin. Through the faint haze of snowfall, Harry balancing two trays of croissants and still managing to hold the bakery door open for Barbara with his knee, an easy grin on his face. Zayn’s mum at home, her back to the camera as she folds the laundry in early morning light.

Niall sitting on the counter as usual, strumming on his guitar as Sophia Grace sings into a spatula. Liam and Louis both wearing their reading glasses as they brush their teeth at the kitchen sink. Louis carrying his little sister Fizzy on his shoulders, his arms up in a V as he races across the park. Cher sticking her tongue out and holding her fork up high; Harry standing over the bathtub. Niall at the window.

It almost hurts to look at, this wall—it’s like a summary of his life so far, his life and all the people in it, all the small things nobody would think to remember but him. There’s nothing about these photos that’s pretty, or dangerous, or _mysterious,_ and Zayn is aware of all the technical mistakes in them, but he likes them just the way they are. He would say it’s the best thing he’s ever done, but he knows that’s not true. It’s the most _right_ thing he’s ever done, though, and maybe that’s better.

As it turned out, Zayn had ended up rearranging the layout of the gallery even further, because apart from putting the photo wall back in, he’d decided to make one of the fake walls a freedom wall. Earlier that morning, he set up some trays of paint and felt-tip pens on a table, and now people are coming up to it, tentatively at first, then more daringly as they leave a message or a splotch of colour. By the end of the night, he hopes, the wall will be completely full.

(“It’s a little corny, a freedom wall,” Storm had said when Zayn told him. “It’s not _terrible,_ but—I’ll admit, not what I expected from you.”

“I know,” Zayn had replied. “But it ties into the whole theme of honesty, y’know? I feel like it’s what the show is all about. What _I’m_ all about,” he’d added, and Storm had respected that.)

Liam, Harry, and Louis are standing over by the freedom wall now, along with Cher, who keeps trying to call a missing Katie on her phone. Wagner and Mary, on the other hand, are strolling around the gallery arm-in-arm, pausing before each piece so Wagner can point out something about it, making grand gestures as he extemporizes and Mary laughs.

Harry’s also brought Aiden along, and one of his classmates from uni. Zayn approaches them in time to hear Harry ask, as he bounces on his toes, “So, Nic, what d’you think of the exhibit?”

“Eh. It’s okay.” The classmate, Nicolo, shrugs noncommittally.

Louis shakes his head at him. “Uncultured swine,” he tells Nicolo, as he smooths down one of Zayn’s stickers which he’s stuck in the center of his forehead. “Hey, Z! This is one sick party.”

“It really is. It’s crazy good, Zayn, all of it,” Cher says earnestly, then goes back to glaring at her phone. _“God,_ Katie, don’t tell me you’ve gotten lost on the underground _again,_ pick _up.”_

“Food’s not bad, either, Z,” says Liam, as he happily inserts two mini quiches into his mouth at once.

“I believe you’re complimenting the wrong person,” Harry says pointedly.

“Hey, where’s Niall got to?” Aiden asks.

“Probably mingling. There are a couple of musicians here, I think,” Zayn replies, but he looks around just the same. He and Niall have spoken over the past few days, of course, but it’s been a little awkward. When Zayn had made a firm decision to go with his original prices, and another to make his own poster for the front of house—just something minimalist like he’d wanted, with a single sample of his art, and his _full_ name printed underneath—he’d told Niall, and Niall had said okay, but Zayn could tell he’d been a little disappointed, too. And yet Zayn can’t bring himself to apologize because, damn it, he’s _right,_ isn’t he?

“I can’t believe Niallers ditched us for the popular kids.” Louis makes a sour-lemon face, then takes a felt-tip off the table and uncaps it, propping his wrist up against the freedom wall. “But we’ll have our revenge, won’t we? There.” Louis steps away from the wall, and Zayn sees he’s scrawled _‘Niall Horan is a twat’_ in giant letters.

“Really mature,” Zayn snorts, then sees someone he recognizes in the crowd, and waves. “Gam! Hey!”

Gamu, Niall’s sound producer partner at the studio, whips her head around immediately at the sound of Zayn’s voice, and charges in their direction. “I have a chequebook and a strict order not to walk out of here until I’ve bought something for the studio lobby,” she says briskly, after air-kissing Zayn on the cheek. “Something big and colourful. I really like that one over there, the one that looks like it’s going to eat you.” She points at the largest of Zayn’s paintings, which is mostly different reds and blues.

“Really? You serious?” A thought occurs to Zayn, and he ventures uncertainly, “Erm, Niall didn’t, like…”

“Oh, don’t worry, love, this isn’t a pity purchase. Niall practically hasn’t shut up about your show for a month now, but James was the one who sent me.” Gamu beams at him. “Now, who do I talk to about payment? I can just have someone pick it up when the show’s over, if that’s all right?”

“I don’t—“ Zayn starts to say, but then he gets a tap on his elbow, and he finds himself looking down at a squat man with square glasses and mad-scientist white hair.

“You the artist?” the man asks in a strong American accent, and Zayn nods bemusedly. “Great!” The man grasps his hand, shaking it vigorously. “Name’s Danny. Got a teenage daughter, showed me your stuff on…Tindergrind?”

“Er, I think you mean Instagram. Sir,” Zayn says as politely as he can muster, aware that Louis and Harry are in silent stitches behind him.

“Right, right. I’m a movie producer back home, you see, but I’m also something of an art aficionado, so I was hoping to find something on this trip to bring back to the States for my office. So when my daughter sent me these pictures, and I found out you were in the area, I thought, this is fate!” Danny grins. “Those two over by the entrance are _perfect._ How much?”

Zayn opens his mouth to answer, feeling a little overwhelmed—but thankfully, Olly appears like magic at Zayn’s elbow. “It’s all right, I’ve got this,” he murmurs, winking, before introducing himself to both Gamu and Danny and leading them both up to the meeting room.

“Would you look at that! We’re in the money, love!” Louis says, punching Zayn in the arm. “I mean, shame they didn’t ask to buy any of the photos of me, but—we’re in the _money!”_

Liam whistles. “Damn. So Ni’s scheme paid off after all,” he says.

“Fuck me,” Zayn agrees dazedly—but he doesn’t even have time to revel in the success of having _sold three paintings_ before he catches a glimpse of someone walking through the door, and he feels his heart skip a beat. “Shit.”

“What?”

“It’s Amber Burnside,” Zayn whispers, staring furtively at the severe-looking woman in high heels who is currently studying his umbrella-stand sculpture, a finger at the corner of her mouth.

“Sorry, who’s Amber Burnside?” Harry asks, loud enough for the people around them to hear, and Zayn shushes him frantically.

“She’s a _very_ respected art critic, okay, like, her articles are in the Telegraph all the time, and I didn’t think she’d ever be caught dead at a place like this, and fuck, _fuck,_ she’s looking at my art, _Amber Burnside is looking at my art,”_ Zayn hisses.

“Hey, Zayner, that’s great!”

“But what if it’s an accident? Or worse—what if she _actually_ wants to talk to me? What if—shit, I’ve got to prepare, I’ve got to plan this.” Grabbing Harry’s sleeve in one hand and Liam’s in the other, Zayn steers them slowly off to the side, using them to shield himself. “Help me, you know I’m no good with words,” he begs. “What if she asks me to talk about myself? What’m I gonna _say?”_

Harry and Liam glance at each other. “Tell her you’re very…passionate?” Harry asks.

“Describe our crappy flat in great detail,” Liam suggests. “Play up the starving artist angle, maybe get a nice rich patron after they read about you in the papers?”

Zayn groans. While he continues to simultaneously attempt to hide from, and think of how to form coherent sentences around, Amber Burnside—he backs into Katie, who has just come up behind him, and he’s so on edge that he actually screams a little.

“Sorry I’m late, shit, sorry I scared you, sorry sorry sorry!” Katie throws her arms around his neck, then pushes a paper bag into his hands. “Please don’t be mad at me, I was out buying you a present.”

“Y’didn’t have to do that,” Zayn says gruffly, but he pops the staple on the bag open and pulls out a big black leather sketchpad with the letter Z embossed in gold on the front. “Oh, Kate.”

“I was already in the shop when I realized I didn’t know what kind of paper you like, like what GSM or GPS or whatever it’s called, so I called Niall and he said you’d been thinking of starting watercolours, so it’s a watercolour pad.” Katie rocks back on her heels, exhaling sharply. “Did I get it right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s brilliant.” Zayn blinks. He barely even remembers telling Niall he’d been thinking of giving watercolours another go; it was months ago that he’d said it, and just in passing.

“Where _is_ Niall?” Katie looks around.

“I don’t—“ Zayn is about to say again, and then pauses. The crowd in here is getting pretty thick, he notices for the first time.

“’Scuse me, all right?” he says to Katie and the others. Carefully, Zayn edges his way through all the groups of people to the little back door, pushes down on the latch, and lets himself out into the cool night air.

It takes him a while to see Niall in the dark. He’s leaning against the wall just shy of a lamp beam, Guinness in hand. Zayn sticks his hands in his pockets, takes a deep breath, and walks over. “Hot in there, innit?” he says.

Niall starts, then relaxes a little. “Yeah. Just needed some…y’know.”

Hesitantly, Zayn leans against the wall beside Niall, staring out across the carpark and feeling the bass from inside thumping at his back. For a long while, the two of them don’t speak; just watch the leaves rustling in the faint wind, and a stray cat streak across the road and disappear into the darkness.

“So, erm…we’ve a pretty good crowd coming in,” Zayn says finally. “Like, there’s this famous art critic, Amber Burnside, and she’s _here.”_

“I know,” Niall says. “I got her to come.”

“You never.” Zayn turns and stares him right in the eye, like he hasn’t done in days. “You _what?”_

Niall shrugs, trying to look cool, but a canary-eating grin is starting to spread across his face, and getting wider by the second. “There was a client came into the studio the other day. Big name, not at liberty to reveal just yet, but one of those real Renaissance man types, you know, who sings and writes poetry books and does the illustrations himself. During the break, we got to talking, and I _might’ve_ mentioned your show to him, and _might’ve_ flicked through the photos of your art I have oh-so-conveniently-at-the-ready on my phone, and he _might’ve_ said he’d tell his art critic best friend, Amber Burnside, to come check it out.”

In that moment, Zayn feels any awkwardness between him and Niall completely melt away. _“I love you,”_ he says fervently, throwing his arms around Niall’s waist and fake-sobbing into his stomach.

“Watch it,” Niall says, “you’re spilling my lovely Irish beer. All over your own back, I might add.” He rubs at the wet spot on the back of Zayn’s jacket with his own sleeve, briskly at first, then slowly. “Have I made it up to you now?” he asks.

“Shut up. You don’t have to make anything up to me.”

“No, seriously. If I was a little, er, over-excited about all the planning…”

“Understatement of the cent’ry,” Zayn mumbles into Niall’s shirt.

“You know I only did it because, well, I believe in you, mate. You tend to downplay how good you are, y’know, and I didn’t want to see it happen now.”

Zayn pulls away and looks at Niall with a fake hurt expression. “You made me drop my last _name,”_ he says.

“I can give it you back! Here—“ Niall extends his arm and taps Zayn once on each of his shoulders. “I dub thee Sir Zayn _Malik,_ knight of the realm, and a true artist. Arise.”

“Thankee, Your Royal Niallness,” laughs Zayn. “But well—I should tell you, mate, the all-caps brand _did_ help me sell three paintings tonight.”

“What!” Niall looks genuinely pleased. “Zayner, that’s amazing. If I helped with that at all, I’m glad.”

“You can do me one better.” Zayn takes a deep breath. “Tell me what to say to Amber Burnside.”

“Z. You don’t need me for that.”

“No, I’m fuckin’ serious. I feel like I might pass out, and my mind’s gone completely blank, and—I need my publicist’s advice.”

Niall hesitates, as if he’s not sure that Zayn means it—but Zayn nods, and he smiles. “Okay. Listen. You go back in there, and if she approaches you, this is what you say.” Taking Zayn by the shoulders, Niall looks at him meaningfully. “You tell her you’re very grateful to have been given this opportunity to share your art with people. You tell her this is the show you’ve been waiting your whole life to do, but that you definitely don’t intend for it to be the last. You tell her you plan to keep on making art and trying new things until you die and your body gets preserved in a museum, except your brain, because people will want to cut it up to find out why you went crazy at the end and lopped off your own ear.”

Zayn blinks. “Wow. That was actually really good, that.”

“Guid. Naow, heid doon arse up, ya wee stupit,” Niall says cheerfully.

“Wurra wurra,” Zayn replies, chucking Niall under the chin, and they go back into the gallery together.

From across the room, they can see the other lads taking selfies next to the photographs of themselves, and Niall runs ahead to join them. Zayn is about to follow, but as he’s passing by the freedom wall, he stops. Standing back, he takes one look at everything that’s been put on it so far—comments about the show, smiley faces, handprints, secret confessions. Then, picking up a felt-tip, he goes over to what Louis wrote earlier and squeezes a few extra letters around the ‘a’, so that now it reads, _‘Niall Horan is Zayn’s twat.’_

The music playing over the speakers changes just then and crossfades into the next song, a dubstep remix of an oldie that makes more than a few of the visitors start bobbing their heads appreciatively. It’s Niall, however, who busts out into a full-on dance first, disco pointing and doing the moonwalk—and when Storm joins him, people start laughing and realizing it’s okay, and slowly start joining in too. Liam and Cher are already singing along and trying to out-rap one another; Harry is doing the jitterbug with Mary, and Katie is lifting Aiden’s arms in the air and trying to get him to wave them, with little success.

Without hesitation, Zayn races over and allows Louis to grab him by the wrist and spin him around. And in this moment, dancing with his friends, Zayn realizes two things. First, that he doesn’t care whether this kills his artist street cred because Amber Burnside or anyone is watching; hell, the _Queen_ could be watching, and he’d still rather be right here, doing this. And second, that for all Niall’s faults, past and present—he definitely always knows how to pick the music.

**Author's Note:**

> HERE, KEE. HERE IS YOUR CORNY HIPSTER ZIALL FANFIC
> 
> Also I SWEAR I started writing this ages ago, before “Pillowtalk” was released and I found out real-life Zayn ACTUALLY intends to go by just his first name (all caps too, if I’m not mistaken? WOW life imitating art is scary).


End file.
